It’s been a bit of a crazy week here, I have done something I have never done before and I have provided an Apha read for a series that I love.  This has been a really tough task for me.  I pride myself on not picking holes in peoples hard work but when I review I’m reading a final polished article. This was a first draft that the author was looking for feedback on – and although they had been so lovely in helping understand that if there were things that seemed off they would want to know, I still found it incredibly hard to break out of my comfort zone and cast a critical eye.  The best thing was that for the most part I loved what I was reading and I hope that for the parts that I wasn’t so keen on I was able to put forward constructive feedback.  It was certainly an experience for me and whilst I feel so blessed to have been given this opportunity to have a say in a series I love – I felt full of anxiety as I was writing my comment.  Thankfully my feedback from Alpha reading was positive I just wish I felt better about it in myself.  I guess this is all stuff that gets easier with time, or perhaps it never does.

In the UK it’s coming up to the school holidays, Little Miss Playground has done exceptionally well this year at school and in her dancing, to reward her we are surprising her with an Owlcrate Jr box, she loves it when I get fairyloot boxes and I can’t wait to see her face when it arrives.  It also ties in nicely with the summer reading challenge for children at our local library, 6 books over 6 weeks and having spoken with her she may want to provide some reviews for the blog too – watch this space!

Finally, following what has been a lovely interaction on Instagram, next week (in a change to scheduled reads) I will be reading The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman.  I have connected with another bookstagrammer Eccentric Owl Reads, and we have spent quite a bit of time over the last couple of months talking about the His Dark Materials trilogy and how much we loved it, when we recently discovered that neither of us had read the Book of Dust we decided to read it together and we will hopefully start this at the weekend.  It’s another testament to the community over on IG and I’m really looking forward to it!

Stay tuned for reviews coming soon!